Out of Chaos
by Nina Romano
From the agora crush,
I step into a wheel of alleyways
centered by a brazier
roasting couscous.
A hub of men in flowing gowns
scoop with bent fingers
from the communal pot,
licking mustaches clean
with pink tongues.
Barefoot I enter a mosque
in a cloche of veiled women
with hennaed feet & palms.
Later I watch men smoke
a water pipe
& sip sweetened tea
from steaming glasses.
I buy blue & pearl beads
knotted of silk threads
from a vendor closing his stall.
A carillon chime
bestirs my mind
to skyfall in peaching spring
& daffodils surrounding the lake in Sabaudia.
Sand. Wild onion above beach dunes
overgrown, reedy with rosemary,
cork trees, denuded, stripped,
nuts falling from umbrella pines,
juniper-like in fall
dancing leaps into dandelions.
I have loved you
bewildered & strange
by the rounded heights of Torre Paola,
Saracen beach watchtower, and skiing
Passo Gardena, snow still falling,
as we sipped la grolla dell'amicizia
hot from spigots caramelized
with burnt sugar
beneath the Amentarola
speck & pickling imagination still;
under cottony moons and dragon clouds,
spotting porpoise in the Tyrrhenian Sea,
island nightfall on Ventotene
ferragosto --
Tonight Orion's belt bristles bright.
Far away places traveled,
remote, unrhymable
surrender to your
soft spice scent,
& I am a hazy aura
with the nearness of you.
Maps unravel
us, my cartographer,
standing silkspun still,
threading in & around ourselves
parabola arcing,
infants again
in mother's womb,
afloat in amniotic fluid,
caressed
a shield of life-sustaining fluids
rock & cushion.
His words, or mine?
I hunger for song, song, song.
Or a shahada.
Minaret bathed in sunlight
sparkles the munificence of Allah.
The muezzin calls the men to prayer.
Behind billows of hashish,
I glide the El Khalili souk;
accosted by hawkers,
I bargain away lipstick & mirrored case
for fine Egyptian cotton,
intimate weave, conjuror,
vicarious amulet keepsake,
& cover my head with the hijab.
Nina Romano is an M.F.A. graduate of FIU. Her poetry, fiction and reviews have appeared in The Rome Daily American, The Chrysalis Reader, Gulf Stream, Grain, Whiskey Island Magazine, Voices in Italian Americana, Vox, Chiron Review, Dimsum, Asia's Literary Journal, Roads (online), and the anthology: Irrepressible Appetites. Her debut poetry collection will be published Spring, 2007 by Rock Press.